


Fall Where They Fall

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e08 Company Man, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9306449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: Episode tag for 2.08: Company Man.“Neal, I think you need to tell me why you asked the paramedics to test you for the same poison they’re treating Peter for.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stardust_made](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/gifts).



> Thanks to stardust_made for the prompt. (And for loving Peter and Neal as much as-and-or-more-than I do.) I promise I'll write you a proper kiss one of these days xox

 

 Neal has seen the bullpen at all hours and in all states of order and chaos.

 

 

He’s pulled all-nighters in the conference room, come in before sunrise to hunch in his cubicle when a case won't let him sleep, and he’s joined in silent vigil waiting to hear if an agent or an officer or a witness will pull through. But this morning — and it is morning, now, almost — the office is blanketed with an altogether different kind of quiet. The place is crowded, for the hour, the hush underlaid with a giddy kind of relief.

 

Peter is going to be fine.

 

They’ve wrapped the case and nabbed the bad guy, and Peter is going to be fine. The mood feels like they want to be celebrating but the miss was too near to allow it.

 

Neal is in Peter’s office, just standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by the detritus of an agent’s life. The ugly FBI mugs, the framed picture of a beautiful woman. The neat stack of files, the compulsively organized bookshelf and that stupid pencil sharpener in the shape of an apple. Neal doesn’t think he’s ever seen Peter use a pencil. He tucks his hands into his pockets to keep from touching and looks around, trying to see the room as it would look if Peter Burke was not be returning to it. To see it as a holding space wherein a collection of meaningless objects is arranged in a meaningless pattern.

 

 _Justice is restoring order,_ Peter had said. _Not furthering chaos._

 

Gazing at the picture on the desk, Peter and El grinning up at him with a warmth he doesn’t deserve, Neal lets himself imagine for a minute that Peter had set this all up for him. This whole situation just one long con designed to teach Neal a lesson in the aftermath of Jessica’s play for revenge that threw Neal into a chaotic tailspin.

 

 _I don’t do hypotheticals,_ Peter had told him.

 

Peter had looked good in that office, too good. In that suit. That bathrobe. Espresso and Kobe steak at midnight, God _damn_.

 

In Peter’s office with the door closed, the lights dim, Neal feels like he’s underwater. Sights and sounds muted through the glass walls, there are eddies of movement down below him but it’s all so murky, distant and dim.

 

Then the door opens and Diana’s quiet step breaks the mirage.

 

“I just spoke with Elizabeth,” she tells him. “The doctors expect to release Peter later today, he should be back to work by next Monday.”

 

“Great,” Neal says, flashing a smile. “That’s great news.”

 

“Yeah.” She narrows her eyes at him, then reaches back to close the door before folding her arms tight across her body. He lets her watch him, not blinking.  He’s barely had time to think about how he should respond to the knowledge that Peter and Diana have been keeping the music box without telling him, and now he’s just exhausted and hoping she’ll come to the point soon. She doesn’t disappoint. “Neal, I think you need to tell me why you asked the paramedics to test you for the same poison they’re treating Peter for.”

 

Neal’s eyes go wide and he catches himself just before he balls his hands into fists in his pockets. Not exactly the point he’d been guarding against. Any other time he’d have a half-dozen glib remarks all ready to hand, but now…now, the best he can muster is half a smile. “Just being cautious, Diana. I was in that office too, I spent the last week with a woman carrying a grudge who thought our methods weren’t quick enough, or brutal enough…”

 

That goes over just slick as sandpaper. He trails off, Diana’s lack of response letting his empty words echo back to him, the look on her face edging just slightly away from cold and towards sympathy.

 

"Yeah," Diana says. "Try again."

                                         

Neal had almost been too late.

 

Trying to track down a suspect who had used poison to get rid of a competitor, Neal had put the pieces together and realized Peter was in danger just barely in time to sprint back to the Novice building, jump the security gates and convince the security-locked elevators to take him up at an excruciating crawl to the penthouse level, back up to where Peter had looked so damn fine acting out his high-level alias that Neal was (almost) ready to curse himself out of existence because a man like Peter should have everything, the best of everything, fly as high as he wanted without being dragged down into the gutter over and over just to deal with the likes of men like Neal.

 

Neal had barreled into the office to find Peter and Kent writhing on the floor, poison working through their veins. Neal hadn’t spared a thought for the other man until he’d carried Peter to the elevators, until Peter gathered strength enough to speak.

 

And when Peter spoke it was to send Neal back for Kent. For the murdering bastard who’d gotten them into this nightmare in the first place. Dying, choking on his own breath, Peter had said _We leave no one behind_ , and Neal, damn him, had run back for the man, had dragged him gasping and retching back into the hallway – ignoring with all his might the voice in his head that chanted a relentless chorus of, _Dying wish dying wish Peter’s dying wish –_ just in time to see the elevator finally arriving on their floor.

 

“No!” he dropped Kent and lunged for the elevator, the doors closing with a cheery ding before he could jam his hand between them. He slapped the controls and dropped back to Peter’s side, cradling his head. “Come on Peter, come on. I swear to god, Peter, if you die because I went back for Kent, I swear to god I’ll kill you myself.”

 

The elevator doors opened, Neal heaved both men inside, and Peter stopped breathing.

 

“No. No, no, no, Peter, come on, oh, God. Stay with me, Peter. Peter!”

 

He’d leapt the gate, hotwired the elevator, carried two grown men down a long hallway, and _now_ his crystalline focus shattered into chaotic fragments. His hands on Peter’s face, maybe he was feeling for a pulse. His lips closing over Peter’s, maybe he was feeling for a breath. He kissed Peter and with each soft _ding_ of another floor passed, descending into Hell, Neal thought, _Almost there. He’ll wake up any second. Next floor. Fifth, fourth, third…He’ll wake up, he’ll kiss me back, he’ll push me away._

 

He didn’t. The doors opened and the paramedics were there, and Neal was left sprawled in the elevator with the taste of Armagnac on his lips.

 

In Peter’s office with Diana, the ten million dollar question in the air between them, her searching gaze is still fixed on him and she looks as tired as he feels but it's his move.

 

_He was dying, Diana._

 

He lets himself think the words, imagine for a moment what it would be like to say them aloud, imagine the look on Diana's face to hear them. If anyone in his FBI circle can get how it feels to be caught in the gravitational pull of someone you’ll never have, can understand the silent burden you learn to bear until you don’t even notice the weight anymore, it's her. He takes all of that, balls it up tight, and puts it into a shrug that won’t come back later to incriminate him.

 

She had his number. Thought she did, anyway. That undercover night months ago, lying around in their bathrobes, sometime between talking about Kate and Charlie and drawing on the hotel room walls she'd lain her head on the pillow close to his and told him, 'I remember the first time I fell, really fell, for someone who could never love me back. You know what I mean,' she'd added after a moment, and it hadn't sounded like a question.

 

'That sounds unpleasant,' he'd said, not breaking eye contact.

 

She'd been the one to look down, fiddling with the duvet between them. 'Short of being shot, it's the most painful…it's the worst feeling I've ever experienced, because all you want is a chance, you know? For the rest of the world, boy-meets-girl and there's at least a _chance_.' She'd looked up at him then, dark eyes somber and open. 'And it's so much worse when they love you, too, because it's so real but it's just…not the way you want him to love you.'

 

''Him'?' Neal had cracked a grin. 'Diana Berrigan, is there something you haven't been telling us?'

 

'Just trying to use inclusive language, Caffrey.' Her own answering smile had been weak, until she gave it up and rolled her eyes, reaching out to shove at his shoulder. 'But I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about.'

 

"CPR," Neal says now, lifting his shoulders in a brief shrug. "When Peter stopped breathing, I started CPR."

 

Diana's shaking her head before he finishes the lie, holding up a folder. "I read your very detailed statement, Neal. You didn't say anything about CPR and Peter doesn't have any bruising indicative of chest compressions."

 

Neal lets out a long breath and looks down at his shoes, rocking back on his heels and rubbing his thumb over his left eyebrow. "That's because I…I didn't get that far. I started rescue breaths and then I remembered the poison and I – I stopped, I froze."

 

"Then that should have gone in your statement, Caffrey," Diana says, crossing her arms again.

 

Neal laughs, and finds that he doesn't even have to check the bitterness that creeps into his voice, what luxury. "You know, I was going to, but I couldn't make up my mind how I wanted to go down in history; as the man stupid enough to forget that Peter had just _drunk poison_ before starting mouth-to-mouth, or the man coward enough to stop after he remembered."

 

The sudden understanding, the honesty in Diana's eyes gives Neal the boost he needs to fuel and launch his version of the truth.

 

"Especially when I can't help wondering," he says, looking up at Diana, looking away, looking back, "if our positions had been reversed…"

 

"What Peter would have done," Diana says, nodding. She's tucked the file under her arm like it's already forgotten, and reaches out to briefly clasp Neal's shoulder. "Well, thank God we haven't had to find out…yet. Come on, Clint's bringing in donuts and some halfway decent coffee."

 

"Thanks, Diana," Neal says, walking with her to the door, down the stairs. "I think I'll just head home."

 

\---

 

Visiting hours are over and he doesn’t have a badge, but he talks his way into Peter’s room. Somewhere the alarms are sounding, _Thief on the loose!_ But he doesn’t think anyone will bother him tonight.

 

Peter’s asleep. Too pale, but peaceful. The disinterested beep and whir of the machinery around them sets Neal’s teeth on edge, tedious and reassuring. Peter looks just like he has every other time, those too-few times, that Neal has seen him asleep. His suit jacket and power tie lie discarded and crumpled in a corner.

 

_I don’t do hypotheticals._

 

_We speculate all the time!_

 

_On cases, not on my life choices._

 

Elizabeth is sleeping on the couch in the family waiting room down the hall, Neal passed her on the way in. Her hands were tucked under her cheek, the fingers of her right wrapped tightly around her left, holding on. Peter sleeps with one hand on his chest, rising and falling with the metronomic rhythm of his breaths, and the other palm-up, outstretched. Neal sits with his fingers steepled beneath his chin, and doesn’t touch what isn’t his.

 

\---

 

Later Peter will make his choice easy for him. Indulging Neal, again, Peter will play the hypothetical game, and he’ll gamble it all away, the money and the success, the nice view and the expertly roasted beans, trade it all for the life he leads and the people he leads it with. “I don’t want to imagine the man I’d be without those people. I like the man I am.”

 

 _So do I,_ Neal tells him silently. _That’s the problem._

 

  _Do what’s right,_ Peter had said, just-woke-up woozy and dreamy-ideal. _Do what’s right, and let the pieces fall where they fall._

 

 _Do what’s right_ , he’ll tell himself, like it’s some guidepost, some beacon, in the lonely hours when he’s not even sure of the cardinal directions anymore.

 

“Let the pieces fall where they fall,” he’ll say out loud, when Peter finally, _finally_ , kisses him back.


End file.
